Christina

Patient
"Starting is always hard, starting this writing, starting with a therapist, starting most things in life. Trust is the main wall that has always held me back. Lack of trust.  As a small child I trusted the adults in my life, I trusted them to protect and keep me safe. That was what they were supposed to do, right?...WRONG.

What I was taught was not to speak, not to tell, keep the silence within so that no one will know.  As I got older, I was taught not to make waves.  Don’t let the small town community know, because the people I lived with were pillars of the community.  My mother was a Deacon of the church, my father was a State Police officer and a business owner.  To me all this was my way of life. I didn’t know any different, I just know I always felt different.

So I took my self into myself to survive.  My childhood was filled with sexual abuse, emotional abuse and emotional neglect. Both of my parents had psychological problems.  My mother was delusional and my father was bipolar, but no one was to know. If you lived in the house, you knew, but "the community" never knew, and was never to know. We were the “typical” white picket fence family.

There was no where to go to be safe, safe from the sexual abuse that was around every corner of the house by my older brother. Safe from the emotional neglect from my parents. Safe from the confusing intimate contact my father.  Was it ok that he would “cuddle with me in his bed” his legs wrapped around mine.  Was it ok that my mother would walk in the room and then walk out again? Was it okay that deep within her, she knew what my brother was doing?

Why would she leave him to babysit me at night when I would develop a high fever as soon as I knew they were going out?  I would beg and plead for them not to go.  Didn’t she notice my soiled clothing, sheets?  Didn’t she notice how I hid in my closet? Why was he so special to her? I don’t know and I don’t think I ever want to know.  No time was ever safe, .No place in the house was ever safe.

My maternal grandmother gave me safety, warmth, creativity, love, kindness. I couldn’t tell her what was happening because something terrible would happen.   So I learned silence, I learned to keep it within; I learned to step outside myself as a way to survive. There are flashes of memories of others involved but the main cause of the sexual abuse was my brother and this period of time was from when I was 3 until 15.

The shower was unsafe.  My bedroom was unsafe…the living room, the floor, the basement.  There was no place to hide so, to survive, I would leave my body.  I never understood what this was until I went to PARTNERS and I explained it to Dr. Brown, who gave me an article on dissociation. It fit to a T.  I wasn’t totally crazy.  I wasn’t alone. Without a therapist to explain, how is someone ever to know there are others who have gone through this, gone through other survival techniques. If you could only know how it feels to know you’re not alone, it’s like finally being able to let a little of the held breath out.

My first experience with therapy was when I was 11; I went to a psychologist to talk.  I could feel my life going in a circular motion.  I knew something was keeping me from fully living my life.  Needless to say, he was not the person for me but wouldn’t or couldn’t admit it until it was too late and I tried to hurt myself and ended up in the hospital. Then he admitted to me and to my hospital staff that he didn’t know how to deal with sexual abuse and incest. How scary.

Over the next years, I saw quite a few different therapists, most not really versed in this either. A little more breath was released. I was a shallow breather from the time I was young.  I figured if I held my breath “he” would think I was either dead or asleep. I didn’t matter but it held me in. To this day I’m still a shallow breather.  I guess some things stay with us. I had to stop therapy because I no longer had insurance and couldn’t afford to pay.  I held my breath.

For a whole year, I had no therapy. There were times when I would flashback and my grandpa would hold me, talk to me, by the time it was over I was exhausted.  He listened, he cared.  There came a time that it all became too much and my grandpa took me for outside help.  What a nightmare.  I started with this woman. I went in to talk with her, telling her that the only way I would talk was if  my grandpa could come in with me, and my bear.  She “grilled” me. To this day my meeting with her still causes me fear. She informed me that my grandpa would not be able to come in with me and she felt I should come several times a week.  By the time we got home I was flashing so bad that all I remember to this day is being on the floor of our apartment like a baby. Maybe her type of therapy works for some but not for a survivor or someone with PTSD.

Then we moved to Long Island.  My grandpa found an online group for incest and sexual abuse survivors where I met a woman who led me to Dr. Brown and PARTNERS.  I’ll never forget my first day. I was scared to death. It took every once of me to be able to go.  My grandpa was beside me, as was my bear.

I walked in her office and knew. Knew I was going to be okay. I’m not saying I wasn’t scared but somewhere inside me I knew. There was a deep connection.  Over many office moves and many days, hours, years of therapy I grew. Dr. Brown guided my growth. "
Frank, Christina’s Paternal Grandfather

“Before Dr. Brown, we strived to find a therapist that would possess the right qualities for this kind of journey.  We struggled for about a year and a half, trying out several different therapists, staying with one for two months, another for about six months, and one more for about four months.  Not to mention one therapist in between all of them somewhere, who was so forceful, so confrontational, so adamant that I would not be part of the sessions (which scared Christina even more), so seemingly not in touch with the frail line that Christina was walking, that she did more harm than good in one session which was truly scary.

Finally, getting discouraged, we got Dr. B’s name from someone who had seen Dr. B. for about six months, and said that Dr. B. was an expert in abuse and trauma.  What we had found out during this trying period was that the therapist had to quietly, but unquestionably, instill confidence and trust.  Trust in the depth of experience that would allow my granddaughter to build an unshakeable bond of trust with Dr. B., a trust that allowed her to let go of one frightening memory at a time.

I have this image of Christina floating in high seas, surrounded by eight or more life preservers she was holding onto at the same time for dear life, not wanting to let go of any, yet having a harder and harder time holding them all together.  Do you drown, attempting to hold them all together, too afraid to let one go, too tired from holding all of them, even though letting one or more go would make it easier to stay afloat? You see, some of them are not functioning very well anymore.

Do you trust the person telling you that you will not drown if you let one of the preservers go?  Do you believe the therapist when she tells you that she will be there for you when you reach out for her hand when you think you are surely going to go under and drown?  When you let go of some of those life preservers, will you live?  It was like that.  And, PARTNERS taught her how to swim.
In some ways I was a bystander (outside of some of the processing that went on in therapy), and in other ways I was intimately involved as a participant in the process.  Sometimes I wanted a breather from the intensity of the battle my granddaughter was fighting and would feel guilty because how dare I want a break.  What about her and what she was going through?  What about the hell she went through, somehow survived, and still haunted her?

I was frequently affected by the torturous tug of war she was having with her past sexual and emotional abuse and the triggers in the present that rekindled the past trauma.  Many of the current triggers being something in my own behavior that could rip open the wounds because I evoked some similarity of anger, or tone, or reaction to something she had said.  Then I would be angry at her and angry at myself and then somehow I had to stop being angry so I could be there for her as she went through flashbacks.  I didn't always do so well.

Stresses that others without the past trauma of incest and abuse could handle within the range of normal arguments, for my granddaughter and me, became traumatic episodes which triggered the same kind of silent, withdrawn and psychotic breaks from the immediate reality of the present situation.  One minute we would be having a discussion, the next, she was in another world, sometimes barely able to respond to me, sometimes beyond my reach.

On several occasions, I was on the phone with her therapist who helped me stay with her, encourage her to breathe (breath holding and flashbacks usually went together), until my granddaughter could come out of the corner up in the ceiling where she was hiding, or the closet where it was dark and safe, until it was all over.  Those were just two places where she could go in her mind until the terror passed.  One time she actually curled up in a real closet.  Sometimes she would talk in a small, almost too soft to hear voice, that was a voice of a four or five year old.  I was always afraid that this would be the time she would not come back.

I read many books on the subject, but we were living a book of our own.  I watched and lived through the process of therapy that helped her come to terms with these bone deep, soul deep wounds.  I cannot imagine the nightmares my granddaughter went through and then relived over and over again in her nightmares from which she would wake up at night.

I find it difficult to say that my granddaughter probably trusted her therapist more than she trusted me, her grandpa, but I understand why.  She trusted her therapist to be there when she needed her, and she trusted her enough to begin to let go of some of the behaviors and thought patterns that were initially essential for her survival but which now got in the way of her enjoying her life.  Remember those failing life preservers?   Actually, she had almost given up on dealing with the past trauma, thinking she was better off with it buried.  But, it wasn't really buried.  And, thanks to PARTNERS, my granddaughter really did learn to swim."